June 12, 2006

Lucy Larcom

Poor lone Hannah,Sitting at the window, binding shoes:Faded, wrinkled,Sitting, stitching, in a mournful muse.Bright-eyed beauty once was she,When the bloom was on the tree:Spring and winter,Hannah ‘s at the window, binding shoes.

Not a neighbor,Passing nod or answer will refuse,To her whisper,“Is there from the fishers any news?”Oh, her heart ‘s adrift, with oneOn an endless voyage gone!Night and morning,Hannah ‘s at the window, binding shoes.

Fair young Hannah,Ben, the sunburnt fisher, gayly woos:Hale and clever,For a willing heart and hand he sues.May-day skies are all aglow,And the waves are laughing so!For her weddingHannah leaves her window and her shoes.

May is passing:‘Mid the apple boughs a pigeon cooes.Hannah shudders,For the mild southwester mischief brews.Round the rocks of Marblehead,Outward bound, a schooner sped:Silent, lonesomeHannah ‘s at the window, binding shoes.

‘T is November,Now no tear her wasted cheek bedews.From NewfoundlandNot a sail returning will she lose,Whispering hoarsely, “Fishermen,Have you, have you heard of Ben?”Old with watching,Hannah ‘s at the window, binding shoes.

Twenty wintersBleach and tear the ragged shore she views.Twenty seasons:–Never one has brought her any news.Still her dim eyes silentlyChase the white sails o’er the sea:Hopeless, faithful,Hannah ‘s at the window, binding shoes.

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Lucy Larcom was born in Beverly Massachusetts in 1826, the second-youngest of ten children. When she was 11, shortly after her sea captain father died, her family moved to Lowell, where she became a “mill girl”, eventually working 70 or so hours per week, alongside the older young women who had come south from mostly New Hampshire.

I went back to my work, but now without enthusiasm. I had looked through an open door that I was not willing to see shut upon me. I began to reflect upon life rather seriously for a girl of twelve or thirteen. What was I here for? What could I make of myself? Must I submit to be carried along with the current, and do just what everybody else did? —Lucy Larcom

These were textile mills powered by the Pawtucket Falls of the Merrimack River during the American Industrial Revolution. She worked in the mills for ten years.

I defied the machinery to make me its slave. Its incessant discords could not drown the music of my thoughts if I would let them fly high enough. –LL

I regard a love for poetry as one of the most needful and helpful elements in the life-outfit of a human being. It was the greatest of blessings to me, in the long days of toil to which I was shut in much earlier than most young girls are, that the poetry I held in my memory breathed its enchanted atmosphere through me and around me, and touched even dull drudgery with its sunshine. –LL

On one hand, Lucy Larcom rose out of the mills of Lowell, which could have been her destiny. She became a teacher and a poet. In this sense we have a woman rising over drudgery and machinery, who was a poet of social, even political bent. But she could also be a marvelous nature poet, as with this poem, which presaged Joyce Kilmer’s Trees:

He who plants a treePlants a hope.Rootlets up through fibres blindly grope;Leaves unfold into horizons free.So man’s life must climbFrom the clods of timeUnto heavens sublime.Canst thou prophesy, thou little tree,What the glory of thy boughs shall be?

He who plants a treePlants a joy;Plants a comfort that will never cloy;Every day a fresh reality,Beautiful and strong,To whose shelter throngCreatures blithe with song.If thou couldst but know, thou happy tree,Of the bliss that shall inhabit thee!

He who plants a tree,–He plants youth;Vigor won for centuries in sooth;Life of time, that hints eternity!Boughs their strength uprear;New shoots, every year,On old growths appear;Thou shalt teach the ages, sturdy tree,Youth of soul is immortality.

He who plants a tree,–He plants love,Tents of coolness spreading out aboveWayfarers he may not live to see.Gifts that grow are best;Hands that bless are blest;Plant! life does the rest!Heaven and earth help him who plants a tree,And his work its own reward shall be.

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More than any other genre of poetry, however, Lucy Larcom wrote what would be categorized as Christian spiritual verse. More than this, though, her spiritual verse categorizes her as a mystic, a mystic who was communicating the heightened spiritual presence for others to witness, raising consciousness at the mystic level. And I do not find these words used to describe her poetry: Lucy Larcom, the great mystic poet. In this sense, she predated Gerard Manley Hopkins (“The world is charged with the grandeur of God”).

Yes, heaven has come down to meet us;It hangs in our atmosphere;Its beautiful open secretIs whispered in every ear.And everywhere, here and always,If we would but open our eyes,We should find, through these beaten footpaths,Our way into Paradise.We should walk there with one another;Nor halting, disheartened, waitTo enter a dreamed-of CityBy a far-off, shadowy Gate.Dull earth would be dull no longer;The clod would sparkle a gem;And our hands, at their commonest labor,Would be building Jerusalem.For the clear, cool river of EdenFlows fresh through our dusty streets;We may feel its spray on our foreheadsAmid wearisome noontide heats.We may share the joy of God’s angels,On the errands that He has given;We may live in a world transfigured,And sweet with the air of heaven.

~~~~

The following poem illustrates Lucy Larcom being both the nature poet, and the Western mystic at once.

Down by the gate of the orchardThis Saturday afternoon,Harry and Arthur and RobinAre getting their whistles in tune.Different notes they are playing;Different echoes they hear;–Always the best of the musicIs in the musician’s ear.

Harry says, “Hark! when I whistle,March winds are wind on the hills;Waterfalls break from the snow-drifts;Their thunder the forest fills.Thousands of bluebirds and sparrows,Sing on the branches bare;Oceans of musical murmursRipple and stir in the air.”

Arthur is whispering, “Listen!Dropping of April showers,–Dripping of rainy rosebuds,–Flight of the rustling hours;–And a speckled lark in the meadow,That utters one long sad note,As if the sorrow of gladnessWere hid in his little throat.”

“Whistle, O whistle!” cries Robin.“Never such echoes could beCoaxed from a twig of the willowAs wait in my whistle for me.When I shape at last the mouthpieceAnd let the rich music out,You will think that Pan or ApolloIs wandering hereabout:

“You will dream of orchards in blossom;Of lambs in the grass at play;And of birds that warble all summerThe wonderful songs of May.”No doubt of it, Rob! in the whistleThat nobody yet has played,Is sleeping a melody sweeterThan ever on earth was made.

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The below image is added a day later for the response to Micky’s comment:

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Thanks so much for this information on Lucy Larcom. I knew she had written poetry, but had not read any as yet. We learned of her in school, but I believe mostly as a writer of social comment in “The Lowell Offering.”

I have just added a picture to the bottom of the original post, of Lucy Larcom Park in Lowell. There is the old Gate House to the left of the canal. To the right of the canal is the parkway, which runs the length of the rear of Lowell High School in downtown Lowell.

The words “Lucy Larcom Park” came out of most of the students’ mouths each day the weather was permitting, to go out there on break or recess. And yet, most only knew she was some poet from the city from way back when.